Google says machine learning is the future. So I tried it myself

Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, used machine learning to defeat its human opponent, but that is just the beginning. Photograph: Ahn Young-joon/AP The world is quietly being reshaped by machine learning. We no longer need to teach computers how to perform complex tasks like image recognition or text translation: instead, we build systems that let them learn how to do it themselves. “It’s not magic,” says Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist at Google. “It’s just a tool. But it’s a really important tool.” The most powerful form of machine learning being used today, called “deep learning”, builds a complex mathematical structure called a neural network based on vast quantities of data. Designed to be analogous to how a human brain works, neural networks themselves were first described in…